Nested repeats with answer recycling

Question

Hello there!

I'm currently building a survey with XLS-Forms with 2 nested repeats, and I want the survey to remember some parts for the next repeat.

The outer repeat is a simple counter for each messurement (1,2,3,4,...) and the inner repeat represents the data of the messurements.

When I collect the data, the outer repeat block is set to 1 and the inner repeat is filled with data (A,B,C,D,...).

Now the outer block is repeated and is set to 2. I want the inner repeat block to remember the values of the first inner repeat block, so that the result of the second outer repeat will be 2 - A,B,C,D,... without me entering A,B,C,D,... again.

I hope that this was somewhat understandable. Thanks in advance!

Hegik · Answer

Hello Doug

Thank you for your quick answer. The links you have posted were very helpful. I reworked my form to use fixed variables for all repeats, because I think it is the easiest solution.

dougbrowning · Answer

If you mean you want repeat 2 field1 to get the value of repeat 1 field1 then no.  This causes a loop as both are the same field name. Field1 = Field1 type logic.  If you do some searches you will find many posts on this.  I have been working with the 123 team on trying to do this for years now.

If it is a continuation and not the exact values then things like max(field) would work.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/pulling-data-from-the-previous-repeat/td-p/776028

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/populate-a-field-within-a-repeat-from-a-previous-entry-within/td-p/878504

You can now display the values using index-repeat but you can only display or add to a different field name not the same.

There may be another way to get close to what you want.  For example I created a defaults page that can add a common set of values.  See here  https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/is-it-possible-to-auto-populate-previous-data-into-current-data/td-p/769175/page/2

If you can post your form we may be able to come up with some ideas.

Hope that helps